its always funny that gamers, the base that is most known for not reading and being generally stupid as fuck and barely being able to interact with games as they are, let alone as art pieces, love to shit on reviews. anyway the 7.8 review is completely correct hoenn has too much fucking water. all these routes are the same shit of the same 3 encounters, the same trainers having the same teams, while dragging your poor water type around because you already wasted 3 slots of hms on your hm mule and you need 3 more water hms to progress through the water section
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
i'm too tired to write out a super long thing (i hope that is understandable) so simply put Yea, I Agree lol
i mention it in the half-a-forum-page-long post that tbh imo score inflation or w/e doesn't matter, let people give scores from their heart, trying to think of scores on a leaderboard scale of media is silly, dumb, would never work
if guy from 2025 thinks a game you think is slop is an 8 and guy from 2007 thinks a game you like is a 7.2, who cares, let bygones be bygones it's different times and people in the first place
i do agree that people make it worse tho with their criticism bc people get death threats when they give a game people are excited for anything under a 7, but IGN ironically has been one of the few outlets consistently going for the jugular as of late and people have been shitting on them for it
like when this happened people got really mad
even tho people have been bitching for years that IGN always gives COD a 7+
i think scores should not really be a big part of the whole ordeal anyways, i think scores should be seen less as a "Report Card" and more as the reviewer's Vibe
there will always be game review issuses based on the reviewer and just how number scores in general can just muddle things up: everyone has their own personal view of a number score, where the baseline is etc etc etc. but i think no one who complained about game reviews have engaged with them other than the tweet announcing a new review was posted. and ultimately i find that even game reviews i completely disagree with are pretty useful. if i love idk unga babunga difficulty and the reviewer is like this game only does unga babunga difficulty and refuses to be anything else, i'll be like holy shitttt im playing that
99% of the discourse around game reviewers is rooted in the fact that they're completely irrelevant now. Which is fine because so are... pretty much all reviewers. The only reviewers that still hold a semblance of relevancy are music publications and that's because there's so much music that what music a publication chooses to review and therefore platform is significant in itself, and assists those who interact with it in their music discovery journeys. Even with music, no one really cares what they have to say about e.g. the new Lady Gaga album because we all know who Lady Gaga is and if we have any interest in the album in the first place we'll just stream it for free on Spotify / Apple Music.
This is why video game reviews are constantly memed on, because no one is actually treating them as reviews. ant touched on this with the fact that no one really reads them. They just want the score to reflect how they feel and then the entire body of text is treated with a "sir, this is a Wendy's" lens because what they actually have to say about the game doesn't really matter to the reader. That means the only meaningful interaction people can derive from game reviews anymore is come level of comedy.
And that's just due to obsoletion. If you're in 2 minds over whether you want to try out a game or not, you watch someone play it on YouTube or Twitch for an hour and then decide whether it seems like your vibe. That's why, for a while and still to an extent currently, games often prioritised graphics, presentation, and gimmicks over core gameplay. You can't get a good feel for how the gameplay works from watching a video of someone playing the game, usually whoever's playing only has fleeting moments of talking about the gameplay itself and most of it is focussed on being entertaining. Reviews talk about gameplay but no one reads them anymore, and gamers only experience the gameplay after they've already made the purchasing decision anyway, so it got deprioritised.
It's got nothing to do with the quality of the game reviews themself which yeah I'm sure are still of good quality. I agree with ant's post, I mean for me Xenoblade Chronicles should be considered and is a 10/10 game because of the context in which the game happened, it's one of the most revolutionary and downright impressive games of all time in every respect, so things like the scoring discrepancy where it originally gets a 9/10 while XCDE gets a lower score, all that makes total sense. But I also get why reviews are memed on, because it makes sense why people don't care about them any more.
(Not just from a technological PoV btw, even though that's extremely impressive. I also find XC1's combat and gameplay to be excellent and novel, RTS with a focus on positioning, chain attacks, the way it controls and its UI in-combat, do you understand how much it blew my mind when I first played it as a teenager. Impressive character variety too where each of them have genuine identities of their own and you're interested in using each of them and rotating them around based on mood, even more so than the Tales series which is also strong in this regard. 10/10 game I stand by it).
This is why video game reviews are constantly memed on, because no one is actually treating them as reviews. ant touched on this with the fact that no one really reads them. They just want the score to reflect how they feel and then the entire body of text is treated with a "sir, this is a Wendy's" lens because what they actually have to say about the game doesn't really matter to the reader. That means the only meaningful interaction people can derive from game reviews anymore is come level of comedy.
And that's just due to obsoletion. If you're in 2 minds over whether you want to try out a game or not, you watch someone play it on YouTube or Twitch for an hour and then decide whether it seems like your vibe. That's why, for a while and still to an extent currently, games often prioritised graphics, presentation, and gimmicks over core gameplay. You can't get a good feel for how the gameplay works from watching a video of someone playing the game, usually whoever's playing only has fleeting moments of talking about the gameplay itself and most of it is focussed on being entertaining. Reviews talk about gameplay but no one reads them anymore, and gamers only experience the gameplay after they've already made the purchasing decision anyway, so it got deprioritised.
It's got nothing to do with the quality of the game reviews themself which yeah I'm sure are still of good quality. I agree with ant's post, I mean for me Xenoblade Chronicles should be considered and is a 10/10 game because of the context in which the game happened, it's one of the most revolutionary and downright impressive games of all time in every respect, so things like the scoring discrepancy where it originally gets a 9/10 while XCDE gets a lower score, all that makes total sense. But I also get why reviews are memed on, because it makes sense why people don't care about them any more.
(Not just from a technological PoV btw, even though that's extremely impressive. I also find XC1's combat and gameplay to be excellent and novel, RTS with a focus on positioning, chain attacks, the way it controls and its UI in-combat, do you understand how much it blew my mind when I first played it as a teenager. Impressive character variety too where each of them have genuine identities of their own and you're interested in using each of them and rotating them around based on mood, even more so than the Tales series which is also strong in this regard. 10/10 game I stand by it).
Love this post, though some things
I actually disagree that the latter is more anime. It's just more modern
The left is very much based on late 80-90s anime, as well as shoujo manga influence for how mouths are drawn/shaded. I DO prefer it though, especially for models cuz modern anime styles severely flatten the face, even for models. As such we can get more dynamic shading with the older style, but I digress
The other thing, while you are right that IGN interviews are not a monolith, it's the fact that games only have 1 reviewer doing them each a genuine issue, especially if it's someone biased against it. You mentioned how attrocious the MD review was, and it's unfortunately common for how diversified reviewers faded over time. The Sonic Unleashed interview with gameplay is infamous: they go out of their way of following the path to straight up jumping into bottomless pits for Daytime, while Night time despite saying combat is sluggish they ironically play way better for it fluidly
But more importantly, reviewers like him were first off, starting with preestablished bias from common gamer opinion at the time. This also includes genuine xenophobia (see the IGN backed show), which contributed to the JRPG slump in the west, as well as severe insecurity for liking cuter games, as gamers were still running on 90s western marketing for vibes. This unfortunately has an effect for long time franchises, where deviating from the norm heavily will be seen as bad. Sonic is infamous for appeal suddenly growing harsh after he stopped being 1st party, Pokemon similarly suffered a lesser extent of spinoffs doing poorly in relation to mainline after Pokemania died. A lot of old NeoGaf or other gaming site opinions still dictate these fandoms heavily, and I noticed devs trying desperately not to invoke the wrath of those opinions, even though the people that spouted them mostly moved on
Personally, I find game journalism severely mixed cuz of this: on one hand, we have someone actually competent to give fair and detailed analysis. On the other, we have a gamer that refuses to engage with the material cuz of preestablished bias, or just not even liking the genre of gameplay. And unfortunately, the reviews regardless can shape opinion for a game for some
It's no surprise gaming companies seriously took less risks after the 2008 crash, relying way more on nostalgia for older franchises, or in Sony's case, straight abandoning them
I agree with the rest of your post, but I do want to say that them being shat on for mispronouncing names in the video review is super valid. The game has voice acting so it's not like there's ambiguity there.
Me giving Dark Souls III a 7/10 because the PVP and several bosses are ass and the DLC a -10/Never because fuck that shit lmao.
I agree that they should've gotten it right but to me that's a video production quality thing rather than the reviewer being invalid, which was the claim at the time. They have a budget they should Google how the names are said lol
While I never really followed the scene closely, I feel like I've run into the opposite groupthink when it comes to novelty in older series and it contributed to me being even more disconnected. For the time shortly after 2008, nostalgia really didn't play a part for me since there just wasn't that much time since I had started gaming. It feels like since the late 2010s every older series has felt pressured to reinvent itself and gets widespread praise for doing so even if the changes make it less enjoyable for me. A decent amount of why I lament a general lack of spinoffs is that if a new idea doesn't mesh with what made the existing stuff good, it still shows up in a mainline entry regardless.
Intrusive thought incoming
...is Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky better than Imagine Party Babyz?
No (
)I actually did read most of your message and found it fairly insightful jsyk. Did have a question about how you mentioned XBC3 changed the way the series handles sidequests and their level of involvement, but as I haven't played any Xenoblade game it's probably not that reasonable for me to ask it.
TLDon'tPlay:Intrusive thought incoming
...is Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky better than Imagine Party Babyz?
No (
I actually did read most of your message and found it fairly insightful jsyk. Did have a question about how you mentioned XBC3 changed the way the series handles sidequests and their level of involvement, but as I haven't played any Xenoblade game it's probably not that reasonable for me to ask it.
xenoblade 1 is like 90% talk to NPC in town, get me 10 of X item
get it come back, standard MMO waste your time shit
xenoblade 3's premium sidequests basically lead to new party members for a special party member slot you unlock like 1/3rd into the game iirc, all with cutscenes voice acting etc.
you also unlock a new Job Class (which is a system exclusive to 3)
those old types of quests are sidelined into the collectapedia where you just have a list of NPCs that want items and then you exchange them
Oh, so it's the mindless collecting part that got pared down, not the interacting with NPCs (the role-playing part)
do these fetch quests have the desire sensor?
I swear from memory a lot of the "20 Bear Asses" type side quests, the ones that are just collecting things without a sub plot, would often just resolve when you grabbed/had the items, to the point of several sidequest rewards coming in the middles of walking through a map or looting a battle withut even going back to an NPC halfway across the game world. While I appreciate the QoL and think it'd be nice for something like if Legends Pokemon games wanted to implement them, it does beg the question why it was done through Sidequests instead of a Collectapedia (akin to LA with the Pokedex tasks).
And this is why I couldn't possibly care less about reviews.
Ultimately, I'm the one who is going to play the game, instead of rolling the dice and hoping I get a review that isn't glazing some nonsense, I'm going to check Youtube for some no commentary gameplay footage or try to get a demo.
It did remind me of this video tho.
Ant, no disrespect, but sometimes we can kinda get too focused on the broader side of games like historical value, and even look at it as an artform.
They're primarily entertainment though. If I boot up a game and I find it boring, I'm going to say something ranging from "Yeah, that ain't for me" to "This is fucking trash, are you kidding me?"
To give an example in Pokémon, so that everyone here is on the same page.
People love to sing HGSS's praises. It does have the best presentation of all the handheld games, if not all the mainline games.
That game is also a steaming pile of shit.
Running around with a bunch of trash Johto mons without the elemental punches to spice up their coverage, horrible game design decisions all over the place, and all the stupid grinding in the slowest engine of the franchise is a tortuous experience gameplay-wise. As a remake, it doesn't fix 10% of the originals' issues.
I'm sure most of you will disagree with what I just said about HGSS, and that's fine because your opinion matters. Y'all can play the game and form your own opinions. That's what's important. Have your own experiences.
Because games are an artform with historical value and cultural significance. Games are art, and they matter as art.
Your next sentences here are no different than if you were someone who only watched Marvel movies to activate some neurons and if you went and said "Why golly, you're almost talking about movies like they're an artform! And their history!"
You can do this with books and movies, in fact a lot of people look at a lot of artforms shallowly. It doesn't make them not art or not matter as art. This doesn't say anything about the medium as a whole, this is you saying "I don't care".
If games are art then a boring gameplay should be taken in account when analyzing them and criticized accordingly just like when people criticize art direction, plot etc.
...yeah?
whether or not gameplay is factored into game criticism was never in question
Yeah, I know, I said it like, three times.
You wrote a full-fledged article about game reviews with all that Xenoblade mumbo jumbo and the big takeaway about the game itself was "That game was a milestone for the Wii because JRPGs in that era were kind of awful, but it aged like milk, and got dunked on by its sequels, this is why the definite edition got lower scores"
I can understand the nuance of its historical impact, (Even though I don't agree, Arc Rise Fantasia was the best Wii JRPG) but I sure as hell don't wanna play it after what you said about it!
Maybe it's just me, but I also see this point of view in other media talks every once in a while with certain movies that are such elevated forms of art, and when you watch them, it's a meandering slog of pretentious slop.
Even as someone who says that games can have the most potential for storytelling out of any media format because of how immersive they can be, I'm still going to value gameplay first. Because it's a game.
Okay
I didn't say Xenoblade Chronicles aged like milk, I said that the context of the releases changed which meant that the game has a different reception to different people at different points in time, when evaluated in the context of said release.
I also didn't say its sequels "dunked on" it, I said that they adapted with modern design trends as well. I also didn't say the sequels actually had any relevance to the remake getting a lesser score, that was due to people reviewing it as a remake product (which inherently gets scrutiny, full price for a remake) and about what it did for that time difference.
OkayI can understand the nuance of its historical impact, (Even though I don't agree, Arc Rise Fantasia was the best Wii JRPG) but I sure as hell don't wanna play it after what you said about it!
You sound like genuinely the most anti-art person I've seen on this website when you say things like this lol
Gameplay is a part of the artform lmao
I think it's unfair to call people shallow because they don't want to play a game that bores them. Games are art but most of them are slop, just like movies and books for that matter, if someone wants to write a deep analysis of the gender politics of Superman 64 more power to them but that game is still trash.
Again, yeah?
You (and Volt, frankly) seem to be missing the point of this discussion. Volt dismissed IGN as worthless (a common opinion), Ant went into great detail as to why this opinion is flawed, and Volt said "I ain't reading that shit, I only care if a game is fun" which itself really isn't a rebuttal to what Ant said at all. It's just a statement about not wanting to read stuff followed by a non-sequitur.
"I think that's a shallow approach to media" =/= "you are shallow"
I imagine you think this is conciliatory but it mostly comes across as patronising lol. Like, yes, we all do that already. Video game reviews didn't destroy our ability to think for ourselves.